Detroit Pistons' Greg Monroe: Most Improved Player or not, his stock is soaring

AP PhotoDetroit Pistons center Greg Monroe, right, and the Sacramento Kings' DeMarcus Cousins, left, often are contemplated against each other as second-year contemporaries, including in Most Improved Player consideration.

AUBURN HILLS – First, whether or
not the Detroit Pistons' Greg Monroe is selected the NBA's Most
Improved Player by the voting panel of sportswriters and broadcasters
after this season, his development from year one to year two has been
exceptional. A variety of factors might conspire against him in the
voting, more related to the Detroit Pistons' body of work than his
own – plus Jeremy Lin's publicity advantages – yet Monroe has
distinguished himself for several reasons.

Second, Monroe isn't quite there
yet, because he could become a rare 20-and-10 man in the league
someday, and to that end, his coach called him out last week, gently
but pointedly enough, for allowing one end of the floor to affect the
other. And Monroe, to what degree anyone can tell anything against a
team like the Charlotte Bobcats, responded.

One of the reasons to like the
Pistons' youthful core is its relative malleability in the learning
process. Monroe's playing time in his second season is up less than
four minutes per game from his rookie year, yet he has raised his
averages by 6.4 points and 2.2 rebounds, to 15.8 and 9.7. And he
remains responsive to instruction, as retiring Ben Wallace has noted
with some veteran admiration.

Monroe's production was down for
the first three games of the southern road trip that ended last week,
his shots cut in half. There were times he was ignored with block
position, but the Pistons, like many NBA teams, don't regularly just
dump the ball into the center anyway.

Monroe often has been on the
bench, in favor of Wallace's defensive presence, late in close games.
It isn't something Lawrence Frank always does, but it certainly
became more pertinent when Monroe averaged seven shots per game in
disasters at Atlanta, Miami and Orlando.

Frank countered that Monroe's
high-energy offensive style – scoring off pick-and-rolls, drives
from the elbow, and offensive rebounds – is usually tied to his
defensive effort, in his bluntest public assessment yet of what his
late-game rotations have acknowledged for some time.

“Sometimes, when you try to get
yourself going on the defensive end, and rebounding, that gets your
energy level, and all of a sudden, you start falling into some
buckets,” Frank said. “I don't think it's a matter of the league
catching up to him. I just think it's a by-product of those things.”

Later that night, Monroe had 25
points and 11 rebounds in a blowout victory, in which he responded on
the defensive end in Charlotte. He added his 28th double-double in
Friday's home loss to Milwaukee.

Any reasonable assessment in the
Most Improved Player voting might succumb to Lin-sanity. Second-year
players are disadvantaged this year because the lockout denied them
an offseason of training at team facilities and a chance to play in
another Summer League. DeMarcus Cousins of Sacramento, Lin and
Monroe are at top of the sophomore group in that regard. But Lin
didn't do it for an entire season and was more a shooting star whose
hypnotic early performances were largely attributable to being an
unknown quantity for whom teams weren't game-planning. Monroe and
Cousins played head-to-head twice, each destroyed the other once, the
Pistons won both times, and Monroe's statistical improvement has been
much more pronounced.

Consistency, availability and
reliability to be taken into consideration. Oft-injured Pistons
guard Rodney Stuckey might have been an exceptional candidate for
Most Improved Player otherwise. Monroe has produced since the
abbreviated season started.

Monroe needed to find a mid-range
game, and between his first and second seasons, his elbow jumper
emerged. Defenses now must choose between getting into Monroe's body and double-teaming when he puts the ball on the floor, or leaving a single
defender to choose between playing softly against that improved jumper or playing tight and risk
getting steamrolled to the basket.

Almost everyone traps, and Monroe's
future development against those responses, in finding the open man,
will be central to his continued offensive growth.

Doug Collins, the Philadelphia
76ers and former Pistons coach, said that before Monroe developed
elbow shooting range, “we just sort of backed off of him and wanted
him to take that little 15-, 17-foot jump shot.”

Not anymore.

“He's making those now,”
Collins said. “So now, all of a sudden, you close on him, he takes
that ball to the basket, he's got the nice spin move, he's got a
great feel for the game.

“Coming out of that Georgetown
system, where they move the ball a lot, and back cut, and do those
kinds of things, he's always been very good at doing that. I liked
him at Georgetown. I love his demeanor, I love how hard he works at
his game, and he's started to make his jump shot, which makes him
difficult to guard.”

Monroe isn't the only dramatically
improved player who will suffer in the Most Improved Player voting
because of his team. Cousins and New Orleans' Jarrett Jack fit that
list, too.

And if Lin does win, it wasn't all
just hype. He stepped in at a critical time for the Knicks and
rescued a season in a whirlpool.

Monroe listed improvement in three
key areas – defensive movement, post offense and trap reads – as
focal points for his first summer in the Pistons' training facility

“I would say I've gotten
better,” Monroe said, when asked to assess his advancement. “I
still have a lot of work to do. But during this summer, I want to
make sure I continue to work. I think I did a good job with that.
And during the year, I've gotten a lot better with it, during the
season. So it's a culmination of a lot of different things. But I
still have a lot of work to go.”

Regardless who wins Most Improved
Player, Monroe's value to the Pistons has increased exponentially,
his ceiling remains unreached, and the height of the team's ceiling
relies, in part, on acquiring a big man to help him. Everyone would
like a rim-protector with pick-and-pop offensive skills, of course,
but if the Pistons manage to land one through draft, trade or
free-agency, the complement to Monroe could push them back into the
playoffs next season.

With that support, ideally from a
player who could force opponents to defend Monroe with power
forwards, and a boost to 33 or 34 minutes per game over a typical
82-game season without compressed lockout scheduling, Monroe could
turn into a 20-and-10 man within a couple of years.

That's rare company. It includes
three such players right now, Dwight Howard, Kevin Love and Blake
Griffin, so there's certainly no dishonor in not joining the club.
But it's not an unselfish expectation for Monroe, even from Frank's
perspective, if achieved through continued improvement on both ends
and a warranted increase in his 31.7-minute average.